MobileDayhttp://mobileday.com
The virtual collaboration and business productivity appSun, 02 Aug 2015 15:22:31 +0000en-UShourly1What Fifty Years of Technological Innovations Means for Right Nowhttp://mobileday.com/productivity/what-fifty-years-of-technological-innovations-means-for-right-now/
http://mobileday.com/productivity/what-fifty-years-of-technological-innovations-means-for-right-now/#commentsSun, 02 Aug 2015 15:22:31 +0000http://mobileday.com/?p=5806Daly’s Pen Shop opened in 1924 in downtown Milwaukee. The store thrived for the majority of the twentieth century when ink pens were all the rage, but these days it barely sells enough to stay open. “I won’t lie. The electronics … Continue reading →

Daly’s Pen Shop opened in 1924 in downtown Milwaukee. The store thrived for the majority of the twentieth century when ink pens were all the rage, but these days it barely sells enough to stay open. “I won’t lie. The electronics have taken a bite out of the writing instrument business,” says current owner, Brad Bodart.

Technological innovations may have led to the decline of the fountain pen, but they are also responsible for changing the way that we work—to the extent that the typewriter is now some sort of cute nostalgic antique sitting in a reliquary that the nerds among us Google pictures of every now and then for kicks.

We work differently now than we did fifty years ago, and we work really differently now than we did in on the 1900s. Here we look at some of the key players in the technological revolution: the computer, the telephone, and the rise of telecommuting.

The Computer

Imagine work without a computer: you’d spend the day writing reports on a typewriter or by hand; you’d ask your boss to answer your questions rather than Google; and you’d smoke cigarettes to get rid of the taste of stamp glue. True story.

Fifty years ago, computers weren’t common, affordable, and slim like they are now. In 1965, the first commercially successful “minicomputer,” the PDP-8, was introduced. If you wanted one, it would cost you $18,000 dollars to get a machine that, today, would feel like a tank. It didn’t have a mouse—those were not invented until the 1970s—so if you wanted to navigate it you would have to type in commands. Basically, using a pen and paper was still faster, so computers were no more than a geeky pipe dream to most people.

They were also ugly; huge, monstrous-looking boxes that were prone to overheating and heavy to try and move around. Computers were simply not that cool in the 1960s.

Your Best Friend?

Snap forward to 2015, and the computer has taken on a whole new chic. They are small, light, user friendly, affordable, and you can choose a color that suits your decor. Sure, they help us get documents written and filed, but they are so much more than that. They correct our misspelled words, store all the data that we would otherwise forget, remind us that we have a doctors appointment—ultimately computers act as extensions of our brains. They are also abundant; an office that doesn’t have a computer is harder to find than a kid without a Facebook account.

A More Casual Way to Communicate

Despite computer talk being the grammartarians worst nightmare, there are myriad ways in which technology has changed and eased our communications for the better; most of which pertain to speed and ease, but there has also been an evident cultural shift.

Computers and email communications have been instrumental in making the office a more casual place; nowadays, you can send an email to anyone at work, including the CEO—fifty years ago you would have been lucky to get a note past your boss’s truculent secretary. With the establishment of easy communication options, the bureaucratic, hierarchical organizational structures of corporations are no longer necessary and have naturally loosened. On the extreme end, some companies, like Zappos, have ditched the traditional hierarchal structure altogether.

As personal computers became more affordable and more user-friendly, people began to adjourn their houses with technology. Desktop computers and landlines progressed into laptops and smartphones, and when we were given more choice in terms of devices on the market and available to us, we started to want more choice at work too: Android or iPhone?

Most of us think of device choice as a basic human right rather than a privilege—both in the office and at home—which led to the rise of the Bring Your Own Device strategy.

Your smartphone looks nothing like the deskphones that some offices still use, and those look nothing like the telephones that Alexander Bell engineered in 1879. The only real thing that all these variations of the phone have in common is the dial pad—but that’s more of an option than a necessity nowadays since we all store numbers in our digital address books. Some of us can still recite the phone numbers that we used to have to remember by heart—your family home landline, your best mates house, your grandmother . . . the local take out.

The only people that have had to suffer through the onerous task of actually dialing numbers in the past ten years are business workers who dial into virtual meetings and calls. Even this is a thing of the past since MobileDay introduced the one-tap dial-in solution which makes calling into work from anywhere—the car, the bus, home, the beach—radically easier.

Telecommuting

Estimates drawn in 2012 from Global Network Analytics state that over 50 million United States workers have the option to work from home at least some of—if not all of—the time.

Telecommuting planted roots in the 1970s as a result of technology that linked satellite offices to their downtown headquarters via telephone lines. By the 1980s, these connections were made easier with the rise of the personal computer, and employees were able to reduce travel costs by being home-based.

Making Work More Accessible

Telecommuting continued to rise in popularity through the 1990s as entire demographics that had been previously prevented from entering or re-entering the workforce found a sustainable and acceptable option: work-at-home parents, caregivers, people with disabilities, retirees, and those living in remote areas could make an income while staying put. There were also substantial environmental benefits that arose from less people embarking on the daily commute; for companies interested in reducing the carbon footprint, this was a great option.

The Anytime, Anyplace Worker’s Dilemma

Technological advances have allowed us to work faster—but they have also allowed us to simply work more. We no longer live in a 9:00am to 5:00pm world; people can work from anywhere now, and they often will.

Want to know something even more unfathomable than the fact that Starbucks didn’t exist in the 1960s: people used to stop working after they left work.

According to a 2012 Good Technology study, 80 percent of people continue working after they have left the office. We are talking about things like answering emails while eating dinner with family; checking smartphones before going to sleep—and then again before getting out of bed when the alarm goes off; or taking a conference call in the morning while driving the children to the bus stop.

So whats the problem? Why shouldn’t we work out of work? We’ll get more done . . . right?

The problem is, that non-stop work is not doing us any good. Just the opposite in fact: the endless barrage of information makes us dumber not smarter, and our ability to make good decisions declines drastically. Working from everywhere is potentially diluting our effectiveness.

With the vast technological advances and innovations seen in the last fifty years, the biggest challenge facing today’s worker is learning how and when to switch off. Hopefully, the next wave of innovations will—like MobileDay has—seek to effectively reduce busyness and encourage us all to take a little bit more time out.

]]>http://mobileday.com/productivity/what-fifty-years-of-technological-innovations-means-for-right-now/feed/0Paving a New Path to Dialinghttp://mobileday.com/features/paving-a-new-path-to-dialing/
http://mobileday.com/features/paving-a-new-path-to-dialing/#commentsThu, 30 Jul 2015 14:05:25 +0000http://mobileday.com/?p=5887Changing the Way That We Make Calls Sixty-four percent of Americans currently own a smartphone that is more powerful than the whole of NASA was in 1969. The pocket-sized micro-computers we carry around today bear as much resemblance to the … Continue reading →

Sixty-four percent of Americans currently own a smartphone that is more powerful than the whole of NASA was in 1969. The pocket-sized micro-computers we carry around today bear as much resemblance to the ornate telephones pioneered by Alexander Bell in 1877 as the butterfly does to a caterpillar—apart from the dialer that is, which has remained a necessity. Until now.

Our Fingers Have Been Dialing Forever…

The tickety-tickety turn of the circular rotary dial, invented by Almon Brown Strowger in 1891, didn’t change to the touch-tone tune of the push-button key until 1963 when Bell Telephone began to issue it as standard. The square dial pad has stayed with us, unmodified, for twenty-three years since; when the first ever Polycom was sold in 1992 the push-button dialer was—and is still—a frontline feature. It remains on desktop phones, and is the keypad design you have on your smartphone. Despite the outstanding technological innovations that have transformed just about every facet of our digital world in the last quarter-century, the dialer remains monotonous: unchanged, and unevolved. Until MobileDay.

When mobile phones emerged with digital address books, and direct caller to recipient calls could be auto-dialed, the dialer became semi-obsolete. However, there was still a large percentage of the business population who had to frequently undergo the misfortunate process of having to manually dial into conference calls and virtual meetings—misdialed numbers, lost call-in codes, and erroneous dial-ins were a regular stressor for many.

One-Tap Dial-in Delight

In 2012 something wonderful happened: the MobileDay app was created, allowing conference calls to be accessed by one-tap as opposed to a string of number sequences. This automated the virtual meeting dial-in process and is relished by professionals who appreciate the time saved by not having to plug in numbers and remember passcodes. With MobileDay, the dialer became only necessary for calling into a conference phone such as a Polycom.

Today, the launch of MobileDay’s new Business feature, Push, means that one-tap dial-in can be directed to the Polycom, desk phone or any type of conference room phone. This extension of the MobileDay call connection ease will mean that no calls require a manual dialer—employees have one less thing to worry about.

After almost 150 years of being stuck as a manual process, dialing has finally grown up to meet a level of sophistication better suited to that powerful little phone in your pocket, and a level of ease that the modern-day business worker deserves.

]]>http://mobileday.com/features/paving-a-new-path-to-dialing/feed/0Mindfulness in the Workplace: How to Start a Yoga Program at Workhttp://mobileday.com/work-life-balance/mindfulness-in-the-workplace-how-to-start-a-yoga-program-at-work/
http://mobileday.com/work-life-balance/mindfulness-in-the-workplace-how-to-start-a-yoga-program-at-work/#commentsMon, 27 Jul 2015 13:55:04 +0000http://mobileday.com/?p=5735Kick Your Device Dependency with Yoga For many of us, work is stressful. For some of us, work is especially absorbing because we love it, but we get overly involved to the point where find relaxing at the end of the day … Continue reading →

Kick Your Device Dependency with Yoga

For many of us, work is stressful. For some of us, work is especially absorbing because we love it, but we get overly involved to the point where find relaxing at the end of the day difficult. The problems of decision fatigue and information overload emerge as an result of this, and just about all of us recognize that we actually work better and more effectively when we take time out.

In the last couple of weeks we have outlined the problems associated with device dependency, such as attention span reduction and inadequate face-to-face communication. We have also presented solutions along the way on how to overcome some of these typical workplace stressors: games that increase attention span, or apps such as MobileDay, which allows you to avoid having to remember conference call dial-in codes and frees up your brain to focus on other things; these technological innovations save your mind and body from additional tension and stress and are an example of how you can mindfully operate to make life easier for yourself.

All the Cool Kids Are Doing It

Mindfulness in the workplace is something of a growing trend, and not just in smaller more close-knit organizations. Large companies such as Google, Aetna, General Mills, and even Goldman Sachs offer yoga and meditation programs. Most of these have evolved because someone at the top went to a yoga class, felt the benefits first-hand, then decided that they wanted their entire workforce to experience them too. Marc Benioff (Salesforce CEO), Mark Bertolini (Aetna CEO), Jeff Weiner (LinkedIn CEO), John Mackey (Whole Foods CEO) and Nancy Slomowitz (Executive Management Associates CEO) are just a few examples of some high-flyers who like to zen out on a regular basis.

The understanding that employees work optimally when they are happy, physically relaxed, and mentally clear is a pretty strong motivator for some employers to put a mindfulness class or two on the company schedule. Plus, a workplace yoga class is a relatively simple addition that need not involve great financial outlay.

Why and How Mindfulness Works

If you want to get all technical about it, yoga and meditation work because they allow the practitioner to access the parasympathetic nervous system—that’s the “relax” one. The other one, the sympathetic nervous system (SNS), is the part of the central nervous system that evolved to get us out of danger: the fight or flight response. Despite being designed to help us run away from things like snakes and bears, the SNS will fire up as a result of any form of stress. That spike of adrenaline you feel when you realize you are about to miss a deadline, or that you just published a blog post with a typo in the headline, or that you can’t find the dial-in code for that conference call that started thirty seconds ago—that’s your SNS kicking off.

The problem is, that with the intensity of the modern-day work life, many of us spend so long in the SNS that we have forgotten how to turn it off. Yoga slows down your rate of breathing, and this places you in your parasympathetic nervous system; hence you feel more relaxed.

In its simplest form: yoga is a really good idea. Just like calendar apps that stop you missing those deadlines, spellcheckers that (allegedly) help you avoid typos, and the MobileDay app that lets you dial into a conference call without having to dig about for codes and numbers, yoga is a tool that will help you minimize your stressors.

Getting Going with Workplace Yoga

For some inspiration, we spoke to a couple of businesses about why they offer yoga and gathered some tips on how to set up a class.

1. Look for the Yogi Within

Literally: Is there a yoga instructor in the house?

There have not been any accurate estimates on the number of yoga instructors in the USA since 2005 when the North American Studio Alliance last did some number crunching, but the figure then was over 70,000. Considering that yoga is hugely more popular now than it was in 2005, there is a chance that your company already has a certified yoga instructor on staff. If you live in San Francisco or Colorado those odds are double.

2. Budget for Classes

Some corporations notice the yoga and mediation have such profound effects on employee happiness and inter-team communication that they budget for classes to offer employees. Others run discounted operations so that employees can benefit from yoga without having to pay studio fees. Rally Software, Boulder CO, offers yoga and wellness sessions for employees on a weekly basis. Alyssa Summers, Knowledge Content Manager says, “The idea is to make it accessible to employees by offering it at the office so they don’t have to go anywhere or pay anything.”

3. Partner With a Local Studio

If there is a yoga studio close to you, chances are that they have a yoga teacher training program. New teachers need practice, and most of the time they are more than happy to teach at a discounted price in order to gain experience.

Some town’s even have a yoga non-profits or organizations that believe in spreading the yoga vibe so much they offer free classes. Boulder Yoga Project is an example of this—a 501(c)3 that seeks to take yoga to anyone who needs it and remove the price barrier. They match yoga instructors who are seeking teaching exposure with businesses looking to offer classes. A quick google search should inform you of any such operations in your area.

4. Purchase Mats

Yoga is a form of exercise that requires minimal equipment and even can be done in a meeting room if you clear the tables to one side. Many employees will already have their own yoga mat—even if it is just gathering dust at the back of a cupboard or being used as a dogs bed. If employers purchase mats however—a small expense as the average cost of bulk purchase is $10 per mat—even those who have never tried yoga before will be more inclined to give it a go.

Boulder instructor Jodi Cole says, “Eliminating the hassle of lugging a yoga mat into work is an effective way of enhancing the overall experience for employees, and shows them that the company really cares.”

5. Make It Accessible

Set the class at a time that is plausible for the majority of employees, such as a lunchtime. Studies show that scheduling an activity in the middle of the day can lead to increases in afternoon energy levels which will benefit your employee’s post lunch effectiveness. Not only do tests show that employees physical health improves with mid-day activity, but their work focus is better too.

Employee Benefits=Company Benefits

Alyssa Summers notices a pretty direct effect on Rally employees after yoga. She says that they leave the class feeling relaxed and calm with, “Smiles of gratitude on their faces.” Summers takes classes herself, and attests to personally feeling more energy and readiness to work afterwards. “It has created a community of like-minded people around the office where we can share ideas, have conversations, and a safe place to practice and focus on our wellbeing.”

Mark Bertolini, Aetna CEO, started practicing yoga initially to relieve physical pain. He was so astounded by the impact that it had on his relationships and how he communicated with others that he started a program for Aetna employees. In Bertolini’s case his employees really did benefit, because after meditating on “inequality” for a couple of months he introduced a 33 percent pay rise for his lowest paid workers. Yes that’s right, you really want your boss to do yoga!

Similarly, Mark Benioff, Saleforce CEO took up meditation to manage work-related stress and stuck with it ever after. Benioff says that meditation is a major part of his life. Yoga and meditation are both practices that you can take up at any time, so even if you have no previous experience, you might consider the benefits of setting up a workplace yoga class.

We’ll end with a quote from Coach Tate, a Boulder-based meditation guide who offers weekly meditation sessions to local businesses:

“Meditation is a feeling. It provides us an opportunity to release from the analytical mind that dominates our lives, and return to a place of optimal health and happiness.”

]]>http://mobileday.com/work-life-balance/mindfulness-in-the-workplace-how-to-start-a-yoga-program-at-work/feed/0Improve Your Attention Span in Six Easy Stepshttp://mobileday.com/pro-tips/improve-your-attention-span-in-six-easy-steps/
http://mobileday.com/pro-tips/improve-your-attention-span-in-six-easy-steps/#commentsFri, 24 Jul 2015 16:17:39 +0000http://mobileday.com/?p=5758Ani DiFranco released “Little Plastic Castle” in 1998, and included these lyrics in the title song: “And they say, ‘goldfish have no memory’ I guess their lives are much like mine And the little plastic castle Is a surprise every … Continue reading →

]]>Ani DiFranco released “Little Plastic Castle” in 1998, and included these lyrics in the title song:

“And they say, ‘goldfish have no memory’
I guess their lives are much like mine
And the little plastic castle
Is a surprise every time”

Maybe her guess wasn’t accurate seventeen years ago, but she’d be right on the money today. A recent study conducted by Microsoft revealed that while people could focus on a task for an average of 12 seconds in 2000, by 2013 that had dropped to eight—and yes, that’s about one second less than the attention span of a goldfish.

Aside from knowing better than challenging Nemo to a stare-out, there are practical implications of this: we find it difficult to filter unimportant distractions from relevant information; we swap devices an average of twenty-one times an hour (OMD UK Study). Some of us get so screen addicted that we hinder our sleep by checking our phones before bed, in the middle of the night, and first thing in the morning.

Apparently part of the reason we’re having trouble concentrating is the explosion of smartphone use and the barrage of content we’re hit with every day. We’re talking about the fact that data from Atlassian shows the office worker checks their inbox an average of thirty times a day and receives 304 emails a week. That’s not to mention all the distracting notifications that pop-up every time a friend texts you, someone pokes you on Facebook, or the weather app detects that it’s about to rain.

Our world of distracting information-slinging devices has a real, measurable impact: we are getting stupider. There are even studies, such as the Microsoft one, showing that people who use digital devices more than others tend to have more trouble maintaining their focus. That’s why the goldfish meme is there you know: to keep you interested. If this blog had no pictures, the chances are high that you would have bounced already.

As a population, we are hit-greedy, data-gobbling screen addicts who devour and discard pages on the internet like the spoiled-rotten child bulldozes through gifts at Christmas. Statistic Brain estimates that seventeen percent of page views on the internet last for less than four seconds. Basically, that is hit-and-run behavior on the web.

In fact, Josh Schwartz, data scientist at traffic analysis firm Chartbeat found that 38 percent of Internet users who landed on a sample group of web articles bounced off the pages without “engaging” with them at all. That means that if 1000 people clicked on this page have already lost 380 of them.

Six Ways to Improve Your Attention Span

1. Self-Regulate

Be strict. Sexton recommends saying “Focus Now” to yourself every time you notice your attention wandering.

Acquire “tunnel focus.” Make an effort to tune out any information except the task you need to concentrate on. For example, if you’re listening to a speaker and someone starts chatting or coughing behind you, challenge yourself not to turn around and look—stay focused on what you’re there for. (Those of you who can eat a donut without licking your lips will have no problems with this one.)

2. Train Your Brain

A number of games designed to “train the brain” have been developed in an effort to improve learning, attention span, and memory functions. Basically these are tests, but we call them “games” because that sounds more attractive.

Carl Beuke, Ph.D., management and leadership selection and development psychologist, recommends a training game called dual n-back to increase your attention span and or working memory. The game requires you to simultaneously remember letters that are spoken aloud by the computer and locations of squares on a tic-tac-toe style grid.

3. Kick Your Stress Addiction

Debbie Mandel, author of Addicted to Stress: A Woman’s 7 Step Program to Reclaim Joy and Spontaneity in Life recommends a number of things you can do to learn to slow down, reduce stress, and improve attention span—don’t worry fellas, these work for men too:

Schedule daily quiet time in a tech-free zone, even if you start with just ten minutes. During that time, observe an object, a passage, a photograph, a plant, or something outside the window without interruption.

Sit down—without your iPhone—and slowly savor each bite of at least one meal each day.

Visit a museum and study a work of art, making note of how much more you perceive when you continue to examine it for a period of time after your initial impression.

When you speak with someone, whether you’re on the phone or talking in person, make sure to give that person your full attention.

4. Get Some Sleep

Catch some quality ZZZs. According to the Society of Neuroscience, “Lack of sleep can affect an individual’s memory, ability to perform simple daily tasks, and attention span.”

To really push the boat out: go to bed without your phone.

5. Automate Daily Processes

The amount of decisions that we make impacts our ability to make rational choices. Likewise the amount of information that we try and absorb affects our attention spans. The more that you can automate your daily processes so that you are able to make less decisions and store less information, the better chance you have of thinking clearly and objectively.

Plan your wardrobe. Set out outfits for the upcoming week on a Sunday so that you don’t have to waste brain juice deciding on shirt or sweater on Monday morning.

Use technologies that simplify. If you make a lot of conference calls, you don’t want to fill your already crowded head with passcodes or PIN details. The MobileDay app will do all that for you. When you are able to limit the small hassles—such as dialing numbers—you make more space to focus on the bigger tasks at hand.

6. Take a Yoga Class

If you’ve never tried downward facing dog, you might want to give yoga a try. Even if you can’t get into any of the poses yet, most yoga studios operate a “device free” studio policy which give you at least a full hour of not checking your emails. That alone is worth the $15 that the average yoga class costs.

You’ll also benefit physically from the stretching and movement. Yoga works to place you in your parasympathetic nervous system—that’s the relaxing devision of the central nervous system—by slowing your rate of breathing and asking you to place your attention on your physical body. For those of us whose occupations mean that we have to think rather than feel, an hour of body focus can reap myriad benefits.

Hopefully these tips will help you avoid the brain-drain and keep your attention span healthy. Be sure to let us know in the comments if you have any of your own to share.

]]>http://mobileday.com/pro-tips/improve-your-attention-span-in-six-easy-steps/feed/04 Radically Simple Technologies You Should Already Be Usinghttp://mobileday.com/simple-workplace-solutions/4-radically-simple-technologies-you-should-already-be-using/
http://mobileday.com/simple-workplace-solutions/4-radically-simple-technologies-you-should-already-be-using/#commentsWed, 22 Jul 2015 13:40:08 +0000http://mobileday.com/?p=5743Toasters, phone chargers, light switches, remote controls: Radically simple technologies are those that make life easier in an exceptional and subtly sophisticated manner. These are the ones that you use everyday, multiple times a day in some cases, but you don’t … Continue reading →

]]>Toasters, phone chargers, light switches, remote controls: Radically simple technologies are those that make life easier in an exceptional and subtly sophisticated manner. These are the ones that you use everyday, multiple times a day in some cases, but you don’t even notice.

We tend to think of technology as only pertaining to things that are electronic and colossal. Today, we pay tribute to three tiny technologies that have had a global impact and have been helping people work for decades. We’ll also introduce one new one.

Three Radically Simple Technologies You’re Already Using

1. The Post-it Note

Think about the last time that you used a Post-it note. After you stuck it on the rim of your monitor, did you consider with gratitude the ease at which you just managed to save yourself from forgetting to pick the kids up from school; buy toothpaste; send your boss that report; or—and don’t roll your eyes because most of us do this—your password.

Most of us do not say a prayer to Arthur Fry, 3M scientist, each time we make use of his little sticky yellow invention. Like many ingenious products, Fry’s Post-it was an accident—the result of a failure. The original plan in 1968 had been to invent a super-strong adhesive but what they ended up with was a conveniently weak one.

The year after 3M officially launched Post-it notes they raked in over $2 million in sales. Nowadays, they generate more than $1 billion each year and are available in 57 colors, 27 sizes and 20 fragrances.

The yellow paper used in the notes was also an accident of sorts, as that was the only scrap paper available to the Post-it team—who incidentally were originally the “Press ‘n Peel” team. But unlike the superglue, the yellow stuck, and when 3M launched the product in 1977 it was a fast success.

2. The Ballpoint Pen

Admittedly, writing about the pen being a radically simplifying everyday technology seems rather dated when you consider that most of us no longer use pens very much; we type instead. But despite the ballpoint not being as much as an office necessity as it once was, it still has its place on your desk—especially if you use Post-it notes.

There are some things that we still don’t type and print because it is faster to pick up a pen and scribble. The ball pen was a revolution in the days when the alternative was the fountain pen—notorious for leaking ink all over shirt pockets, fingers, and of course, that document that you have just spent three hours writing out.

John J. Loud was the first person to earn himself a patent for the ballpoint pen in 1888. His invention was born out of the frustration of trying to write on leather with a fountain pen. But the ballpoint did not really take off until Hungarian newspaper editor László Bíró began to sell the Birome in 1943.

In the 1950s Marcel Bich put the Bic Cristal on the scene. Today, the Bic is the world’s go-to ballpoint with over 100 billion pens sold. Currently, Bic sells 20 million pens every day.

If you don’t have ink on your fingers today, you have the ballpoint to thank for that.

3. The Paperclip

“An instrument used to hold sheets of paper together.”

Sounds simple, and from the definition alone one would assume that this function could be matched by many other methods and devices: staples, folders, files, plastic wallets, hands, rubber bands—all these things can hold paper together too. So why is the paperclip so special?

Staples can bind paper sheets to one another, but in a much more permanent fashion. Undoing or removing a single sheet in order to photocopy it or give to a colleague results in ripped corners. The paperclip, invented by Samuel B. Fay in 1867, is non-damaging.

Folders and files are paper-friendly alternatives, but are less user-friendly. You cannot flick though a file without having to open the whole thing up and take everything out. The paperclip, made widely available by Gem Manufacturing, is flicker friendly.

Hands are great tools for holding paper together. They are, however, often needed for other things: eating, typing, writing Post-it notes. The paperclip is the hands-free solution to paper binding.

You can also pick a lock with it.

Americans buy on average 35 paperclips each per year. This equates to approximately 11 billion sold annually.

And One You Should Be

MobileDay’s app is another example of a technology that radically simplifies a daily process: dialing. Especially useful for people who make a lot of conference calls or work in sales, this neat little app will get you on any call with just one tap.

People do appreciate MobileDay; we know this from our user reviews and 4.5 star ratings. But we hope that in years to come, one-tap dial into conference calls will be as taken for granted as the ballpoint is.

]]>http://mobileday.com/simple-workplace-solutions/4-radically-simple-technologies-you-should-already-be-using/feed/04 Tips on How to Avoid Workplace Distractionshttp://mobileday.com/pro-tips/4-tips-on-how-to-avoid-workplace-distractions/
http://mobileday.com/pro-tips/4-tips-on-how-to-avoid-workplace-distractions/#commentsMon, 20 Jul 2015 13:47:10 +0000http://mobileday.com/?p=5561Device Dependency–Can Information Ambush Performance? “When I was a child, I walked a mile to school in the snow…without shoes.” Yeah, we’ve all heard that clichéd old yarn. Regardless of the era, it seems that older generations relish in chiding … Continue reading →

“When I was a child, I walked a mile to school in the snow…without shoes.”

Yeah, we’ve all heard that clichéd old yarn.

Regardless of the era, it seems that older generations relish in chiding younger people about how much “easier” things are now than they were “back in the day.” But you have to admit it: they are right—especially nowadays with the advances in mobile technology, there is a lot of truth in the notion that it is easier to do things.

Even if you do walk barefoot in the snow to school each day, think about the technology-enabled conveniences we now take for granted: with a few taps on your mobile phone you can communicate with friends; listen to music; hail a cab; participate in work meetings; collaborate on projects; get directions; in fact, there are more things that you can do with your smartphone than you can’t.

Other than swim; you can’t swim with it.

How Did We Ever Get By Without Smartphones?

Believe it or not, it was less than forty years ago that a computer scientist named Vinton Cerf developed a way for the computers on all of the world’s mini-networks to communicate with each other. Yes, if you’re older than forty, you lived in a world that had no Internet. Also worth noting: Bill Gates introduced Microsoft Windows just 32 years ago, in 1983. Back then, this blog would not have been a blog. It would have been an article that would have been drafted on a typewriter and printed on paper. And the subject would have probably been tips on how to get used to a new and radical technology: the fax machine.

Snail Mail: For when it absolutely has to be there next month.

Who would want to go back to that, right? You might be surprised. People are beginning to question whether our lives—and our work habits—are truly better now that we’re barraged with convenient information and connectivity 24 hours a day. Instead of being more efficient and productive, it is arguable that we are wasting time and becoming confused and exhausted (to the point where our work performance might even suffer) by a never-ending stream of info bytes.

The good news is that we folk over here at MobileDay are going to attempt to help you (and help ourselves) recognize and avoid those workplace distractions. The idea behind escaping the information ambush is that all of us will get more work done while we are at work and, subsequently, get out of work sooner. Here are our top four distraction busting tips:

1. Don’t Give in to the “Screen Suck”

Mobile technology, by design, helps us to do more stuff in less time. Paradoxically though, it still contributes to time wasting, both at work and at home. You may have heard of the concept of the “screen suck,” a phenomenon labeled by Edward Hollowell, and defined as: “Wasting time engaging with any screen—for instance, computer, video game, television and BlackBerry.”

How do you know if you have been screen sucked?

Take our quick quiz:

Do you ever find yourself staring at your computer or smartphone in a trancelike state?

Do you mindlessly click from one website to another as you waste time chasing images and information?

Do worry that your computer is broken if you haven’t had a new email in more than 90 seconds?

Do you make a habit of scrolling down your Facebook feed until you are re-reading posts that you read yesterday, then refresh the page and do it again?

This poor kitty is showing symptoms of advanced stages of Screen Suck.

If you answered “yes” to one or more of these questions you, my friend, have been screen sucked. Don’t worry, you are in good company—most of us are right there with you. Unfortunately, the most immediate advice on how to overcome the screen suck is also the hardest to take: Step away from the screen.

2. Ration Your Pop-ups

How important (really) are those notifications and interruptions?

Even more worrisome than time wasting is the implication that technology is contributing to a demise in the quality of your work. A recent study that involved interrupting students who were writing complex, creative essays revealed that frequent interruptions (such as notifications of emails and other information on smartphones) resulted in shoddier work.

The researchers suggested that interruptions affect more than just the amount of work we can complete in a given period of time—the ability to complete good work is at risk.

Add more than one distracted individual to a work group, and potentially that whole team’s performance could suffer. In fact, another experiment by psychologist Eyal Peer at Carnegie Mellon University, which was designed to measure the brainpower lost when someone is interrupted, found that “the distraction of an interruption, combined with the brain drain of preparing for that interruption, made our test takers 20 percent dumber.”

That’s right: those pop-ups could be increasing your dumbness.

3. Simplify Your Daily Processes

This refers to structuring your daily tasks so that you have as little opportunity for distraction as possible. For example, having some snacks with you in the office so that you don’t have to stop what you are doing and go to the store every time you need some brain food.

Or, for a more task relevant example, it would be like not having to go and search through your emails for a conference call passcode just before you are due to attend a virtual meeting—which might be something that you still do multiple times a day.

Here’s the scenario: you open up your inbox, get distracted by new emails, start to reply to one, remember that you are late for a meeting and panic, hit send too early, finally find the passcode and get into your meeting—but you spend the whole conference worrying about that half-baked email you just sent and subsequently don’t pay attention or contribute as well as you should have.

This is our favorite one, as this is the one that we know for sure we are trying to do at MobileDay. In fact, you could say that this is our scientific speciality. With the MobileDay app, you don’t need to shift your focus to your emails in order to get into a conference call. Instead, you get one-tap entry, which will allow you to arrive on time and undistracted.

4. Minimize Distractions

“For now, the best solution to the interruption problem seems to be tuning out,” writes Cyrus Foroughi, a doctoral student in the Applied Performance Research Lab at George Mason University. “When working on something important, you should reduce the amount of external interruptions as much as possible. Shut your door, silence your phone, and disable notification from email and social media sites like Facebook. It won’t stop every interruption, but it will help.”

In the end, we each have to own our technology behavior and make decisions about our accessibility and how it is affecting our professional and personal lives. Is it worth it to you to delete Facebook from your phone and CNN from your work desk so you can spend more time focusing on the people around you and the task at hand?

Try shutting off your phone and finding out.

What are your favorite ways to beat the screen suck? Let us know in the comments.

Company data shows significant increase and prevalence of mobile conference calls; coupled with industry insights this indicates a trend in specific job types, company sizes and industries using mobile devices to make business calls.

This week, MobileDay announced that our core user base has now made over 10 million calls using our one-tap conference call dial-in app. So far this year, more than two million calls have been dialed into with MobileDay—that’s over two million instances where a user has enjoyed getting onto a call from their mobile device instantly without having to remember conference call PINs or passcodes.

Striping that information down to the core, it highlights the increase in the mobile workforce and the rise of the anytime, anywhere employee. An analysis of MobileDay user profiles found some very interesting trends in usage that, when coupled with industry data from analyst firm Ovum, were telling of type of employee, particular industries, and company sizes that need extra mobile IT support.

Trends the Data Describes

1. Meetings are on the increase: A recent report from Ovum shows that employees are scheduling more meetings than ever before.
2. Conference calls are on the rise: More and more often, these meetings are being held in a virtual space with employees attending via their mobile devices at an increasing rate. Ovum reports 32 percent of all meetings are virtual.

3. Large businesses make more conference calls: Two-thirds of MobileDay calls made on mobile devices came from businesses with 5,000 employees or more.

4. Mobile workers choose technologies that increase their efficiency: 10 million calls made by 185,000 MobileDay users represent votes for a technological innovation that eases the process of joining calls while on-the-go.

5. Particular industries and departments use mobile solutions more than others: Manufacturing, business services and software industries prove to be MobileDay’s biggest users. Within these industries, sales departments make the most mobile calls, followed by computing and IT.

What we can deduce from this 10 million call milestone and industry data, is that in order to support mobile workers, large businesses in the manufacturing, business services, and software industries in particular should consult sales and computing department representatives in order to determine if additional tools are needed to increase workforce effectiveness. Furthermore, because industry trends are indicating that virtual meetings are on the rise, apps and other technologies that ease the process of joining calls will be increasingly important moving forward.

MobileDay Pro is a great solution for anyone who is often flustered with the hassle of having to dial into a virtual meeting. If you still need convincing, we are offering you the chance to try MobileDay Pro for the discounted price of $6.99 for a yearly subscription this week (usually $14.99).

To celebrate our 10 millionth call with us, take advantage of our special annual subscription price of $6.99 a year for MobileDay Pro.

]]>http://mobileday.com/promotions/top-5-new-trends-in-enterprise-mobility/feed/0Howard Diamond on What 10 Million Calls Means to MobileDayhttp://mobileday.com/promotions/howard-diamond-on-what-10-million-calls-mean-to-mobileday/
http://mobileday.com/promotions/howard-diamond-on-what-10-million-calls-mean-to-mobileday/#commentsWed, 15 Jul 2015 16:02:26 +0000http://mobileday.com/?p=5545Interview with Howard Diamond, MobileDay CEO, by Robert Haisfield. So Howard, MobileDay has reached the milestone of connecting a whopping ten million calls. How did you get there? Well, there’s a couple different things that have gotten us here. One of those … Continue reading →

So Howard, MobileDay has reached the milestone of connecting a whopping ten million calls. How did you get there?

Well, there’s a couple different things that have gotten us here. One of those things is that MobileDay users are evangelical, and they’re evangelical because our product is an elegant solution that solves a real business problem. It’s not something that corporate tells them to do, and it’s not something that’s a big deal. It’s just a simple—radically simple—tool that makes life easier.

MobileDay addresses a key business problem—that dialing into calls is a nuisance—and that’s fundamentally why we’ve reached ten million calls. Every single MobileDay user is a revolutionist: a person who is saying “no” to settling for the inefficient technologies that are taken as a given and is open to finding a better way. Our users love us because we understand their daily workplace struggles and are providing a tool that takes away one of those problems. It seems like a small thing—but you don’t have to be big to be impactful.

More importantly, we are accelerating—it took us significantly longer to go from zero to one million calls than it took us to go from five to ten million calls—and this really proves that people who use MobileDay tell their friends to do the same.

It’s just a simple—radically simple—tool that makes life easier.

What does this rapid growth mean for MobileDay’s working environment and culture?

There are a couple different things. So let me start from a basic premise, right? At MobileDay, we want our product to delight people. Well, we believe that from a cultural standpoint too. My goal was to create a company culture that’s delightful; where people love coming to work and we’re all excited about what we’re doing and what we’re accomplishing. So that’s piece one.

Piece two is that we’re a startup and we’re venture funded and we’ve got a bunch of money in the bank, but we have the ability to fail. I have no intention of failing. The idea of bringing in more and more incredibly powerful, incredibly capable people who fit into our pretty informal and pretty non-corporate culture is sort of piece two.

This is really about constructive growth. I mean, I believe in business. I passionately do. I think that 18 months from now, 24 months from now, 36 months from now, MobileDay will be a dramatically bigger company. I don’t think we’ll ever be massive, because the kinds of things we’re doing aren’t people intensive. Right now we’ve got 20 people. At full success, I guess we’ll have 150 people, but we’ll generate an incredible amount of value, and an incredible amount of revenue.

Being disruptive is challenging, but it’s also fun. I think this says a lot about our company culture.

What we are doing in terms of the MobileDay app is disruptive—we are saying no to the conventional dial in system and providing a non-standard solution. Being disruptive is challenging, but it’s also fun. I think this says a lot about our company culture.

How is MobileDay disruptive?

I’ll tell you something really funny that my step daughter mentioned to me a couple of weeks ago: The keypad for the phone was first commercialized in 1963. Can you think of another thing like that—that’s a core piece of technology—that hasn’t really changed in fifty years? And yet, it hasn’t.

There’s all sorts of phones out there now, like mobile phones and Polycoms, and different things, but they all have the same sort of keypad on them. They have to, because that’s the conventional and standard starting point of every call. But not with MobileDay, right? We do one tap dialing. And so the concept that we want to be really disruptive to the cell phone industry, to the virtual meeting world, to the concept of productivity and individual employee delight… those are all parts of what we’re trying to accomplish here.

There’s this overwhelming trend towards radical simplicity. People don’t want to be pressing a million buttons, they want one.

We’ve seen so many technologies go from needlessly complex to radically simple in the last 50 years. We’ve seen libraries condensed onto a single e-reader. We’ve seen programming go from punch cards to languages… There’s this overwhelming trend towards radical simplicity. People don’t want to be pressing a million buttons, they want one. They want stress-free. Why can’t that happen with dialing phone numbers too? Why not just make phone calls one button? Why not MobileDay?

You know, being disruptive is a really fun thing to do, and it thrills me to be a part of that. This makes it really easy for me to incorporate other people into it because I can paint a vision that they can get really excited about.

You mentioned going from a dial pad down to just one button. Would you say the move towards radical simplicity is coming anywhere else, within the company, within the industry…

There is a lot of things that we still need to work on as a company. For example, we’ve got a small group of about 20 people, and a small management team. And until recently, they’d meet a lot.

Wanna know a secret? I don’t go to a lot of big meetings. I find most meetings to be a waste of time. My meetings always start on time. My meetings are always short. So I really believe in that, and I really walk that talk. And yet, I would argue that as a company, I’d failed at creating a culture where that permeated.

So one of the things that I’d like to see is radical simplicity in everything that we do here. How do we have less meetings, and how do we make sure we’re maximizing our opportunity? How do we make sure that the irreverence that I like to bring towards pretty much everything is more part of our culture and more part of how we interact with each other?

Well, we’re working on it. Step one is just changing the structure of our meetings. Traditionally, they’ve been an half an hour and an hour at a time. Now we’re making them 23 and 47 minutes at a time, because we want people to have a bit of a mental break between meetings. Also, when those meetings do happen, we want people to be absolutely focused.

Our whole goal at MobileDay is to give people some extra minutes every day to collect their thoughts and be human, and it’s undeniable that we’ve got to walk that talk. Achieving our ten millionth call has been a real milestone for us, and we intend to continue to nurture, evolve and enhance our company culture as we head towards 20 million.

]]>http://mobileday.com/promotions/howard-diamond-on-what-10-million-calls-mean-to-mobileday/feed/0Workplace Communication: 3 Steps to Becoming a Better Listenerhttp://mobileday.com/work-life-balance/workplace-communications-3-steps-to-becoming-a-better-listener/
http://mobileday.com/work-life-balance/workplace-communications-3-steps-to-becoming-a-better-listener/#commentsFri, 10 Jul 2015 21:17:54 +0000http://mobileday.com/?p=5417“…the person who feels busy rationalizes why it’s ok to not really listen to you,” -Liane Davey Are You Too Busy? According to Liane Davey, Vice President of Knightsbridge Leadership Solutions and the Lead Team Effectiveness, there are different types … Continue reading →

Are You Too Busy?

According to Liane Davey, Vice President of Knightsbridge Leadership Solutions and the Lead Team Effectiveness, there are different types of busy. She explains that there is a difference between being busy and feeling busy and how these effect workplace communication.

Being busy is a state in which a new task needs attention as soon as a current task is completed. For example, you know that when you have finished reading this blog you will have to immediately check your emails for the hundredth time, and after that you have a call scheduled, and after that … etc, etc.

Feeling busy, on the other hand, involves worrying about the next task while you’re trying to focus on the one in hand. So for example, you are already fretting so much about the call that you have scheduled later on today that you have not taken in a single word of this blog.

It is the latter one, feeling busy, that is going to act like a nail in your tire when it comes to you going anywhere or getting things done. Feeling busy keeps you from staying present, interferes with your ability to concentrate on the task in front of you, makes absorbing information difficult, and can have the effect of making you a bad listener.

Too Busy to Listen?

Ever had a conversation and realized part way through that you have not heard a word of what the other person has been saying?

If you answered “yes” to that question, you are not alone. Most of us might feel ashamed to admit that not only can we recall such an experience, but that it happens with embarrassing regularity.

Feeling too busy can have an impact on how you process the information that other people share with you; it can also affect your attitude when it comes to receiving new information. Not only are both of these outcomes going to make it harder for you to do your job effectively, but they will also make you seem disinterested, distracted … rude?

Bad Listeners Make Bad Teammates

“…the person who feels busy rationalizes why it’s okay to not really listen to you,” Liane Davey writes. “The person who feels busy nods and says ‘uh-huh, uh-hun, uh-huh’ to rush you along. The person who feels busy doesn’t take the time to explain to you what they are really thinking—let alone to give you any context that helps you see the big picture.”

Sound familiar?

You might find that there are times when you avoid having conversations with people or become irritable when they don’t get straight to the point. There is a reason for this: If your brain feels like it has too much coming in already, you might find that you are somewhat resistant to receiving more.

Overall, feeling too busy has the potential of turning you into a bad listener.

How do you achieve all that you need to achieve, and still retain the essential qualities of being a top-class listener and a supportive team member?

1. Choose Your Tasks Wisely

It’s tempting to look at your to-do list and pick out the tasks that you know you can do faster, or the ones that you think are easier, or the ones that you find more enjoyable. According to Davey, this is not always the best approach.

Rather than default to starting the tasks that you know you can do quickly, Davey recommends that you prioritize the heck out of your to-do list. Remove the filters of “quick,” “easy,” and “fun,” and replace them with “must get done,” “really should get done,” and “would be nice to get done.”

Then, start your day with the “must get done” tasks while you have the most energy. That way, when it comes to 5:30pm and your energy levels are flagging, you will hopefully have gotten through all of those really important items.

With your most dreaded tasks out of the way, you will feel less burdened— this is good news for you and everyone around you. You will feel happier, be more inclined to indulge in conversation, and out of the office before midnight.

2. Do One Thing at a Time

It’s oh so tempting when you have ten things to do in a day to try and “save time” by doing two or more things at once. We all attempt to multitask sometimes—attempt being the operative word because it is widely and well known that humans make hideous multitaskers.

A lot of this depends on what it is you are trying to multitask on. If the two things are “drink coffee” and “read emails,” then you are probably going to get away with it. However, if the two tasks are “prepare presentation” and “attend team meeting,” it is highly likely that you will do neither of those things with much skill or presence.

At MobileDay, some frequently shared wise words from our CEO Howard Diamond are “Do one thing, and do it really well.” As a team, this is really important when it comes to listening to one another in meetings—where we have a device-free meeting policy to help us stay undistracted—and in casual conversation too.

It is also reflective in our product, which is a small and simple tool designed to be easy to use and remove the bother of dialing into a call.

3. Get Over It

Tim Kreider, New York Times, writes about “The ‘Busy’ Trap,” and how being too busy is something that we collectively force one another to do as a culture. In the workplace, it can be difficult not to be tempted to imagine that your busyness is somewhat a reflection of your level of importance, and this can lead to a communication break down if you don’t think you have the time to stop and listen to someone else—someone else who’s level of busyness is not as high as your own?

Everyone is busy. Your colleagues are busy, your friends are busy, even your cat is busy. The trick, is not assume that your busy is more important than anyone else’s busy. Taking a reality check every now and then can be a really effective way to put things in perspective.

What are your tried and tested methods of staying on top of your busyness? We’d love to hear what works for you or if you have any workplace communication tips to share.

]]>http://mobileday.com/work-life-balance/workplace-communications-3-steps-to-becoming-a-better-listener/feed/04 Steps to Beat Decision Fatigue and Increase Your Effectivenesshttp://mobileday.com/productivity/4-steps-to-beat-decision-fatigue-and-increase-your-effectiveness/
http://mobileday.com/productivity/4-steps-to-beat-decision-fatigue-and-increase-your-effectiveness/#commentsFri, 10 Jul 2015 14:36:43 +0000http://mobileday.com/?p=5407In our last post, we introduced the concept of “busyness,” and how many of us cram every minute of the working day full of tasks—some of us even feel slightly lazy unless we have spent the day in a frantic state … Continue reading →

]]>In our last post, we introduced the concept of “busyness,” and how many of us cram every minute of the working day full of tasks—some of us even feel slightly lazy unless we have spent the day in a frantic state of email-sending, text-flying, brainstorm-busting activity. What today’s post will elaborate on is how such a work environment has the potential to affect our ability to function—and the reason why you might struggle to string a sentence together at the end of a long day.

There is no denying the barrage of information and work-related tasks that are readily available through today’s advanced technological devices. As you read this post you can probably see your emails coming in, and you might have even felt your phone bleep in your pocket. We are easily able to fill our days to the extent that we have little to no time to take care of ourselves: eat, use the restroom, laugh, and—perhaps most importantly—do nothing at all.

The ability to constantly assess our work lives seemed, for a time, to boost productivity and efficiency. Or did it?

Is it possible that when you are frantically trying to do a number of different things at once that you are not actually doing any of them particularly well? Is it possible that busyness is more of a habit than a necessity?

Lets see: Can you remember the last time you shut off your phone? What has been the longest period today that you have gone without checking your emails? Do you know what color top the person sitting next to you has on (without looking)? When did you last talk to someone and give them your undivided attention?

When did you last give yourself undivided attention?

The Myth of Mulitasking

Most people who work in business, at least those who have classic “Type A” personalities, know what it feels like to be insanely busy. Some of us might even believe that we thrive on that feeling and pride ourselves in our ability to multitask: answering emails while talking on the phone; driving while participating in audio meetings; reading a text while sitting talking to someone else. But—as shown by an Oxford Journals study—we are kidding ourselves when we reason that attempting to multitask does anything other than dilute our attention and reduce our impact.

As productive as frantic work habits might seem, consider this: Is being busy really the best way to be your most effective self?

Is it possible, in fact, that being too busy might negatively impact important skills such as the ability to make good decisions or to communicate well with colleagues? Is it possible, too, that constant busyness can have a negative impact on your physical health?

Decision Fatigue and Data Overload

As an example of the very real cost of being too busy, let’s look at the concept of “decision fatigue.” You may have heard of this term used in reference to politicians and people who have to make mind-blowingly huge decisions that affect the lives of millions on a daily basis.

Decision Fatigue:

… the deteriorating quality of decisions made by an individual, after a long session of decision making.

“I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing,” President Obama told Vanity Fair‘s Michael Lewis. “Because I have too many other decisions to make.”

That is sound advice from a man who knows that he has a limited supply of decision energy—best save it for the ones that matter and leave worrying about what color tie to wear to someone else.

If Obama isn’t immune to decision fatigue, then what about the rest of us?

Writing for The New York Times, John Tierney, co-author of Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, described a study demonstrating that prisoners at parole hearings were paroled 70 percent of the time in the early mornings but less than 10 percent of the time if their hearings occurred later in the day. Why?

Researchers theorize that human beings have limited mental energy to apply to decision-making, and as each day wore on, the judges were affected by decision fatigue. “The more choices you make throughout the day, the harder each one becomes for your brain, and eventually it looks for shortcuts,” Tierney explains.

If your day is packed with tasks that require decision-making energy, you might find your judgment lagging later in the day. But without White House resources and staff to tell you how to dress, lessening the burden of decisions can be a task in itself. Overcoming decision fatigue calls for strategy, planning, and—somewhat unfortunately perhaps—you will have to make some decisions about which decisions to stop making!

All is not lost. The good news is that we have compiled a four-step strategy to help you bust decision fatigue.

1.Take Control of Your Daily Decisions—and Eat!

Nicole M. Coomber, PhD, associate director for the QUEST Honors Program at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, writes, “research shows that human brains have limits, and making too many decisions over the course of a day can wear down a person’s self-control.”

When this happens, Coomber points out, different people’s brains react in different ways. Some of us end up making more reckless choices; this is the moment when you throw in the towel at 3pm and go on a shopping spree. Others tend to do nothing at all: literally. Your brain freezes up and you find it almost impossible to make a choice—maybe that explains why you got home from work the other night and felt totally unable to decide what to eat for dinner.

Coomber’s short-term suggestion: eat something. Believe it or not, a simple high-glucose snack helped judges in a seminal study make better decisions. So, eating is one way to relieve decision fatigue when you are already in it—but as with most things, prevention is usually better than cure. The key is to avoid decision fatigue altogether, and steps 2-4 focus more on this.

2. Identify Your Values

Your personal values differ from those of the person next to you, and because of this, you wouldn’t make the same decisions either. If you can determine your long-term values—the ones that don’t change from day to day, you might be able to create a blueprint of sorts that you can use to govern the decisions that you make.

For example, if you are trying to decide whether or not to enroll in an e-learning course; doing so might benefit your career, but it also means that you won’t have as much time to socialize. If you already know that you value financial security highly, you can use this information to fast-track that decision.

3. Automate to Create Space

Coomber also recommends automating some life choices in order to reduce the number of decisions that you consider each day—for example, automatically allocating money for deposit into a retirement account; getting the milk or newspaper delivered; even really simple things such as setting your phone up to automatically download the podcast that you like to listen to. It is often the small decisions that are perfect candidates for automation as the error cost is minimal—the world is not going to end if you end up with an extra pint of milk.

The theory behind automation is that by creating repetitive habits that remove the necessity to make daily scheduling decisions, you are removing some of the decisions that hog your energy. More daily examples of this would be exercising at the same time every day, or going to the same place to buy groceries—which might sound as if you are making your life mundane, but lets face it, most of of could do with a little less to think about. Especially when you realize that having to make even trivial decisions early in the day might impair your ability to make more important ones later on.

This runs alongside the concept of doing less to achieve more, and using the tools available to you in order to help you achieve simplicity. Apps such as MobileDay—which takes out the dial in process associated with phone calls—can help you stay on your A-game for longer.

4. Allow for Intuition

Coomber stresses that while values and automation can be useful tools that help you rationalize your decisions, not all things can be solved with information. She recommends listening to your gut, but not immediately throwing rationality to the wind should your intuition spark up. Instead, see if you can allow feelings to mingle with facts on such occasions to avoid any head-over-heart dissonance.

Recognizing decision fatigue if it affects you is an important start in overcoming it. Once you are aware of the problem, you can apply tactics and plan to lessen the decision burden upon you. Don’t expect too much all at once; instead begin with some small—yet important—changes that will help you automate some of the processes in your life and simplify others.

Putting Theory into Practice

At MobileDay, we are far from perfect, and some of us admit to being serial multitaskers. As a company, however, we put measures in place to encourage a culture in which our employees are encouraged to just do one thing at a time—and therefore, to do it well.

Our device-less meeting policy, for example, allows us to concentrate fully on the people in the room and the task in hand. Nobody is checking their emails as another colleague is talking. Ultimately this concept removes the temptation to multitask while in meetings; something that we have noticed leads to more efficient and effective meeting-space results.

In the next post, we will take this concept a little further, and explore what being too busy can mean for your relationships with co-workers, and your health.
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